China 2017: Muslim Quarter

When last we left our very unheroic hero, he had arrived in Xi'an a full day late, without sleeping, appallingly jetlagged, and in the early stages of adjusting to powerful mind-affecting medication, to find his hotel politely reporting they had never heard of him.

Well, you may say. Well. Well, well. Um. I mean, I had definitely made a booking, and had money taken for the booking, and I have a fair amount of confidence that STA Travel weren't scamming me.* On the other hand, these nice people couldn't find a record of my booking or payment. What a conundrum, you might say; rather a pickle, isn't it?

*they had of course used an intermediary, and in theory they could have been scamming me; but I was far too tired, nauseous and language-shocked to think of that.

Obviously I'm not about to do anything outrageous, like throw a tantrum, or burst into floods of tears, or demand to speak to the manager, or proclaim that I was being treated appallingly, or threaten to write to the Telegraph, or insist that they give me a room, or suggest that they might be wrong, or imply in any way that they might personally be at fault, or look cross, or sigh heavily. I must confess I do at one stage raise one eyebrow and show them my booking printout, but in my defence, I am very tired and assume this was all some simple misunderstanding, and no actual injury was intended; though I do of course later send an anonymous basket of flowers.

Anyway, I look sheepish and tug my right earlobe a couple of times, and apologise several times for troubling them, and murmur in an embarrassed way that there seems to have been some kind of mistake. These moments are when you realise you're abroad, because this does not send the entire staff into a frenzy of anxious activity; nor does a grizzled veteran named Pam or Tom emerge from a secret abode, plonk a brick-red cuppa down on the desk and stare thoughtfully at my passport for a minute, before rummaging in a hitherto-unnoticed drawer and producing a document that explains and resolves the whole affair. In Japan, too, this behaviour would probably have caused the silent flaring of emergency lights in a back room, from whence a crack team of customer service marines would have sallied forth to deal with the seething client before any kind of rampage could ensue. In China, for some incomprehensible reason, they appear to take my mild demeanour and friendly tone as an indication that I'm not stressed or irate about the latest in a string of exhausting failures, and we can discuss the whole situation at length.

My Chinese is definitely not up to this. I have probably never been happier to have a native speaker on hand to help. Between us we relay information back and forth for a good fifteen minutes, comparing different screens and sets of paperwork - I dig out my laptop and fire that up in case it helped (it didn't). Eventually they offer to give me the room, since I do seem to have all the right information, for which I assume HT's silver tongue and obvious trustworthiness is responsible. Personally I tend to have more of a "police are anxious to speak to this Caucasian male seen in the area" vibe. I agree to email my travel agent and ask them to provide more information so we can resolve this in the morning; one of those occasions where the 8-hour time difference causes problems!

After my very late arrival, HT suggests we go for a walk. We head to the nearby city centre; it has a concentration of interesting historical areas that I remember well from my previous trip. The sun is slipping lower in the sky, casting soft yellow light.

Here's my route: you can sort of follow along, although China and Google maps don't play well, so I suggest you use Baidu maps instead for street view exploring.

The underpass that encircles the heart of the Old City

^_^

Left: The central square by the Xi'an Bell Tower. Right: Archival footage! I took this back in 2008, at the same Starbucks. The lady is Joanne, who was on another volunteer programme. One day I'll get around to blogging about that trip...

Looking up towards the Bell Tower.

I believe this is a hotel and/or restaurant in the Bell Tower Square. Left: 2017. Right: A view from the bridge in 2008.

This man is creating elaborate pictures inside a bottle by very careful application of sand.

How many different kinds of shop is this? And more importantly, why? I count: shoes, bubble tea, whole coconuts, and dried fish products. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just... not a combination I would have predicted, you know?

Muslim Quarter

This district has a high concentration of Muslim residents; I assume this partly relates to Xi'an's historical role in the Silk Road, bringing traders from across Eurasia. It has all kinds of stalls and shops, and is a hotspot in the evenings. I've heard it's also a hotspot for pickpockets, so as an exhausted tourist I try to take good care.

It's also busy most of the time, day and night. There are plenty of souvenir shops here was well, and an excitingly windy covered market; but this time we don't go in there.

This is not particularly busy by the standards of the street.

Quite a lot of the stalls are dedicated to food. Below is an artisan making traditional sweets, kneading and stretching and twisting dough hung on a hook. It will be cut up and rolled in various combinations of nuts, spices, sugar and other flavourings. On the left you can see deep-fried squid and crustaceans, which are eaten like a lollipop.

These ladies run a sweet stall - quite a popular one as you can tell by the number of staff.

After a wander round, HT takes me for a meal. She recommends a regional delicacy called Majiang Liangpi (麻酱凉皮, Májiàng liángpí). These are cold noodles, served with a sauce based around black sesame. I try some, because it's not like I get the opportunity often. Unfortunately, between exhaustion and the unfamiliar taste, I find I'm not able to eat very much. I know sesame paste is one of the more acquired tastes in Chinese cooking, so I'd like to try and get used to it.

I think the green place in the centre is the entrance to the restaurant, but it's hard to be sure.

This is the upper part of just one of the buildings that line the Muslim Quarter. There are lots of these striking buildings near the city centre. I love the architecture.

As the evening sets in, it starts to get busy - people are finishing work, or deciding to head out with the children, and congregating here to take advantage of all the food stalls.

We decide to call it an evening, and HT kindly escorts me back to the hotel. On the way I take this photo, to help show off the sheer sense of vastness that I always get in China - the cities are so big, so tall, and although Japan was similar in some ways, Xi'an also has (unusually?) some big wide open spaces that highlight it even more. I suppose the areas of clustered tall buildings have a claustrophobic feel, whereas when there's a break in them, it gives you the space to more fully grasp the size of what you're dealing with?

I got way too attached to this function.

Basel: An Unpromising Start

Having had a pretty nice time in Lucerne, the time has come to begin what inevitably feels like the rather depressing homeward phase of the journey. I'm due to fly out from Basel, but having come all this way I decided to book a couple of days there first. Now this feels like a mistake.

Easily buying a ticket, I hop onto the train and read for an hour, looking up as we pass through the nicer bits of scenery.

Getting off at Basel station, I am greeted by a grey building and a man lighting a cigarette. I drag my luggage onto the escalator into the main concourse, where my initial plan is to look for somewhere to eat. It's early, but getting to the hotel will take a while; if I can eat first and then go to dump all my stuff, that'll be great.

Using the handy free wifi available at all the stations I've visited so far (take note, Britain) I hover outside a bookshop and scan for eating places, trying to ignore the smoke wafting towards me from the smoker by the door. There's a few options but not a huge number nearby. I check out the offerings at the cafe across the way, trying not to breathe too much.

Failing to find anything appealing, I head downwards again, intending to go through the station and check out a little run of eatery-type streets near the station and tram station. Dodging smokers as best I can, I decide the CHF40-a-head place in the basement isn't for me and head north. This rapidly turns out to be west.

The lesson for today is that even Google Maps is not your friend.

With much difficulty I manage to loop back in the intended direction, passing a Burger King and a rather intimidating Italian restaurant. Nimbly evading the constant barrage of trams, I attempt to go to a Chinese place just by the station, but looking inside it's fairly clear that my suitcase would be a distinctly unwelcome consumer of space amidst the very packed seats. I give up, deciding to head to the B&B and drop off my things, then come back and eat late.

If I was summarising Basel in one photo it would probably be this one. There are at least six tram stops in this photo, ideal for first-time visitors who have no freaking idea what they're doing.

It was harder to find somewhere to stay in Basel, so I've been forced to book somewhere in the actual suburbs. This means a two-part trip, by tram and then bus, according to what I can find out. I buy my ticket and wait for the tram, then start watching my progess. Google Maps is behaving very oddly.

No, I'm just going in a completely different direction to what I expected. This must be the wrong direction of tram.

I get off, now nowhere near where I wanted to be. Exasperated, I decide to set off on foot. It's about a 30-minute walk from where, as best I can tell, I am now. Since the transport options are now different, I'm not sure how to get there by any other method. Also, getting buses in another city is in my experience a very different proposition from getting trams. Trams have fixed stops and it's fairly clear when you're there. Buses do whatever they like.

There now begins a Kafkaesque carnival of errors.

Diligently reading the names of streets and consulting my map, and Google Maps, I nevertheless progress perpetually further from my intended route in an escalating spiral of fractal wrongness. Every street appears to twist and turn in directions that do not, on calm consideration, reflect the familiar geography of our material universe. Setting out north-east along Sternengasse, I find myself on the wrong side of an underpass to the west ascending Auberg. Elizabethenkirche appears to exert an unholy influence over my fevered movements as I search with increasing grim frustration for a way out of the knotted streets. The stars above wheel in their courses, and hateful shadows dance in the doorways at the corners of my vision.

At last, I miraculously break free into Aeschenplatz and, pausing only to solve the intricate puzzle of where the Number 3 Tram might stop amidst a bird's nest of tramlines, find myself at last on the way to Aaron's Sleep-Well B&B.

I get off at Breite and set off in what turns out to be the wrong direction.

I have never been more thankful that I set up an overseas data roaming plan before coming here.

Weaving my way across several crossings and under a flyover, I set off into a suburb of apartment blocks, pausing only to photograph a crop of unfamiliar brain-like fruit fallen beneath a trea. At least, I hope they were fruit.

Based on my experiences so far today, it is entirely plausible that these are not fruit. I avoid examining them too closely.

Following Google Maps with the fervid focus of a dangerous madman, I haul my revolting yellow suitcase over curbs and around cars as I make my way into the maze. At last, I spy the actual corner of Aaron's Sleep-Well B&B distinctly visible before me, amidst the trees. It's just past the bushes, the vans, and that impenetrable wall of hazard fencing erected by the hard-hatted man diligently demolishing the entire road-and-pavement network of the district.

Oh.

Not to be so easily defeated, I consider sitting down on my suitcase and hoping to be adopted by a passing benefactor, but glimpsing someone striding past on the other side of the hostel I have another idea. Although Google Maps doesn't actually show it (because it's not a road - seriously, it's a major flaw of a product people use for many things other than driving, although possibly not in car-obsessed America) there is in fact a footpath up ahead, beside the canal.

I round a couple of corners, pass an apartment block, and drag my suitcase up a very narrow grass-overgrown flight of stairs to the canal, resolutely not swearing.

I hate Basel. I don't hate it in any particularly fervent way; not the kind of passionate hate that somehow endears you to a place. It's the kind of dull, grey hatred I attach to taxation paperwork and Crewe Station; I am grimly determined to endure it. I resent the time I have spent pointlessly walking around it, the inescapable smokers, the fact that my hotel is annoyingly far away, the absence of convenient eating-places and the necessity of spending two days here before I can leave. A scrupulously fair judge might consider some of these resentments misplaced, but I have abandoned any pretence at impartiality.

Soon, a mere hour and a half after I set off on my twenty-minute journey, I stand outside the hostel.

I wander through the gate and knock politely. No answer. It's smaller than I expected...

I try the door. Nothing. There is a tourism sticker on the door though, so I'm confident it's the right place. It has a kind of... sitting room look.

Giving up, I wander back to the canal. There's a set of steps leading down the side of the building, to the pavement I'd have used if it wasn't being dug up. With no better ideas, I decide to go there and reluctantly drag my suitcase all the way down. Here I do find a postbox with labelling that confirms it's the right building, but no sign of anyone here either. It doesn't look much like a B&B.

Part of the obstacle course from the main road. It looks even worse from the other end, but I think technically you probably can get through in fact. Especially if you don't have a suitcase.

The entrance, although not the right entrance, to the B&B rooms. You need to go round the back, to the third entrance you can't see from any external point. Obviously.

Checking my emails, I notice that the staff agreed to expect me about 2pm. It's only 1.30 now. Maybe they're out? I dash off a quick email (thanks again, data plan!) and sit down to wait. Luckily, a few moments later, a man walks around the corner of the building carrying a pillow. He looks surprised.

Things are shortly sorted out. This is indeed the man in charge, and he's been cleaning the room. I go inside. As far as I can tell, it's not what I'd consider a B&B at all - which is to say, a house or pub which lets out some of its rooms for short-term guests who also get breakfast. Instead, it's a small building divided into a large and a small apartment, which are as far as I can tell let out by offsite owners. Unless they do actually live upstairs? You can get breakfast, although I don't understand how that would work, and I decide not to.

Finally having freed myself of the suitcase, I walk back down the canal towards a tram stop. I don't emerge at the tram stop I expected, but making the most of a small victory over geography I get on the damn tram and like it. A small bonus I discovered is that a stamped card I got from the B&B allows me free travel on public transport, though it's a shame I couldn't get it before I got the tram there - always a problem with these schemes.

Disembarking in the middle of town, I look for somewhere to eat. Passing a posh restaurant and a bijou burger shop, I find a Burger King, and decide to give up any pretence at sophisticated tourism or indeed balanced nutrition. Chips it is then.

Lucerne: Hotel Alpha

Tonight I'm staying at Hotel Alpha, fairly near the station and town centre of Lucerne.

The room proves to be only slightly better than the last for lighting. There is at least a central light over the bed, and a secondary one for the washbasin, as well as table lamps. It's still quite dim though. There are a couple of sockets, but they're a long way from the table where you might want to plug in a device or two while you use them.

Lucerne: Gletschergarten

Near the lion, I notice a flight of stairs leading to a small hut, and somewhat intrigued, I wander up. This is the Gletschergarten.

On a whim, I go inside. It turns out to be small and rather nice, and surprisingly interesting in that low-key way that peculiar museums often are. The site is a set of geologically-interesting relics of the ice age discovered during the building of a wine cellar. There are rocks with marks left by the glaciers, and peculiar potholes caused by the swirling action of sand-laden meltwaters.

Hamamatsu: the arrival

We hear First Nation commanded to beat the rug - not definitely

Enthusiastic thespian Roman is enjoying endless legal action

I feel like I should feel guilty that the first thing this city brings to mind is terrible cryptic crossword clues, but I don't. I feel vaguely guilty for that, if it's any help.

Off to Japan!

So, Saturday. Today I fly to Japan, via Amsterdam and Seoul.

The sleep-adjusting thing doesn't seem to have worked. I was more or less back on track for being 4 hours ahead. Unfortunately, on Friday night I carefully wound down, had a shower, turned off screens, avoided bright light all evening, went to bed... and was as completely and utterly unable to sleep as I've ever been.

I've had long-term insomnia before, so it's possible that I'm just not able to cope with fluctuations in my sleep schedule. The fact that I tend to go to bed late probably doesn't help; if I normally went to bed early it would at least give me a headstart on Japan.

As it is, sticking to my normal about-midnight bedtime would leave me wanting to sleep in Japan just when I should be getting to school. Not ideal.

Jersey: The Glass Church and abject failure

It is, once again, excessively hot. I am exhausted. It's mostly down to the weather, which has been relentlessly warm, and I'm not great at that (see: everything I wrote about Japan ever). To some extent, though, it's also because I'm having to work fairly hard to find ways to occupy myself. Touristing is relatively hard work, and requires a fair amount of planning because the places are scattered around the island. I can't simply crash in my room and surf the internet or watch films, because that requires sitting in a very specific spot in the garden where I can hope to be connected about 15% of the time. Also, that pesky RSI is stopping me from just writing. So! Today I thought I'd head off to the Hamptonne Country Life Museum. I'm hoping this will be a cool, indoorsy place where I can drink tea and muse gently. I'm also taking my laptop, so that if worse comes to worst I can do some flashcards or something.

Resolution made, I take the bus through Millbrook, where I remember as we pass it St Matthew’s Glass Church, which I intended to find out about but forgot. Millbrook is the place to change buses for the HCL anyway, so I hop off at next stop and wander back. The church is... not quite what I expected. I'd been envisioning a church that was actually glass - maybe a glittering stained-glass marvel along the lines of Paddy's Wigwam, or a chapel made of huge panes of glass and full of light? Perhaps an ordinary church fill to the brim with elaborate glass ornaments? But getting a brown sign isn't a sign of being a major monument, but a place of possible interest to tourists. We have to take scale into account. Jersey is a relatively small place, so it's not likely to have a large number of major attractions: the handful of castles and museums it has easily meet quota. The Glass Church doesn't pretend to be anything major, I just leaped to that conclusion because it's mentioned. As a small and isolated place with a relatively small population, little interesting places are going to seem more prominent than they might in a major urban area.

So, the Glass Church is a place where some fixtures are made of glass. It's perfectly pleasant, worth sticking your head round, but not particularly fascinating to be honest unless you're really into church architecture.

Having done that, I decide to get te bus to the HCL. This is where things fall apart, because after much traipsing I finally find a bus stop - which is to say, a pole. The stops on the other side of the road are proper stone shelters, in the shade, with seats. They look really comfortable. This is a notice nailed to a pole in the sunniest part of the street. It is deeply uninformative. It lists the numbers of buses, with the ultimate destinations. I’m sure it’s useful if you’re a local, but there is no indication whatsoever of where any of these buses actually go along the way. Diligently, I try looking at the four different maps I own, but this doesn’t enlighten me, because none of these ultimate destinations appear on the maps. Apparently they are either too unimportant, or they're the name of a specific part of a small town. This leaves the option of either stopping every bus which passes to ask if they go where I want, or walking.

Looking at the timetable, it will be over an hour before all possible bus numbers have passed, and so on average it's likely to take me at least half an hour of waiting. It's really very hot. After much consideration I try to walk. It’s only a couple of miles, right?

This is a mistake.

I find a road sign indicating the Hamptonne Country Life Museum, and bein walking. After a few yards, the pavements disappear. Hey, who needs pavements? It’s not as though humans walk. Certainly not in Jersey, it would seem. The road becomes steep, and increasingly winding. As I try to navigate around a corner, two huge lorries thunder past from opposite sides, drivers gawping at me in incomprehension. I am, shall we say, uncomfortable with this. The road seems to grow steeper as I walk, until I might be traipsing up a cliff. Heat shimmers off the road. Sharp-angled driveways appear behind me, disgorging unexpected vehicles. I feel increasingly like an FPS protagonist surrounded by spawn points.

After a few minutes of this, I give up and turn around for my own safety.

I was really hoping the Millbrook change would be a sensible move; it means only taking the bus halfway to St. Helier, which means only spending 20 minutes rather than the full 40 minutes needed to cover to cover the 5ish miles between the two towns.*

* Horrifyingly, I can reliably run this distance faster than the bus covers it.

Now it looks as if unless you know exactly what you’re doing, the only sensible thing to do is go to St. H and get the bus there. But this walking thing is obviously not going to be enjoyable whatsoever. I give up. Stuff this visiting places lark; if they can’t be bothered to make it easy for tourists (a supposedly significant part of their economy) to get to places, I will not visit them. The museum sounded vaguely interesting, but I’m not risking life and limb to get there due to lack of information on the buses. I'm really quite fed up about this, but I’m just going to St. Helier to sit in a café or something. Defeatist, perhaps. I could go to St. Helier and get the bus from there, but by that point it would be lunchtime. My experiences at Castle Elizabeth warn me against expecting to eat at a tourist attraction in Jersey. If I wait until after lunch, by the time I can get to the museum the place will be practically ready to close. I’m going to give up on visiting anything and just go somewhere to read. Well done, Jersey.

So I do. I tote my bag over to the library, and study flashcards in the cool. I'm actually incredibly tired, from the heat and from the effort of touristing. Always having to think up ways to occupy myself and search for meals is exhausting; the meals in particular have been difficult, because it’s too hot for me to eat the big restauranty meals, and the choice in most places has been extremely limited, so there's been a lot of traipsing around.

I make a token effort to try going to the museum in the afternoon, after a lightish meal at M&S, and then just give up. I don’t really want to go to another museum. I’m hot and exhausted. If I were at home, I’d just curl up and try to nap. I’m basically stuck in town until I get a bus to the hotel, then I’ll be stuck in the hotel, so I try to make the best of it and just go back to the library. And that’s basically it.

I spend the day studying, reading and listening to podcasts. Rather than scout around for food yet again, I have sudden inspiration and pick up some bits from M&S again. I’m once again astounded at the dearth of bread rolls in Jersey,* but do find a couple here, and some fruit salad. That’s about all I can imagine eating. Despite being far milder than Fukuoka, the weather has done a number on me.

It's mysteriously like Japan, possibly from joint French influence? I can find large loaves of bread here, which are far more than I could possibly eat, but small items seem to be exclusively brioche. I've nothing against brioche, but I'm not going to make a sandwich out of it, because it's cake. And I do try not to eat cake for every meal.

In the evening, when it’s cooled off a bit, I have a stroll around. I never did see the supposed coastal path south-west of St Aubin, and there’s still no sign of it (in both senses of the word), but I wander through the streets a bit. I watch the first half of Tokyo Sonata, which I’ve had lying around from Lovefilm for about three months now and never got round to. As I had feared, it’s rather depressing, but not overwhelmingly so, and I’ll probably finish it.

I never did. I kept it for another couple of months, and never mustered the enthusiasm to watch the rest. I started once, realised the rest of it was just going to be more of the same, and gave up after yet another scene of family arguments. The synopsis I read makes me glad I did. I've already got a taste of the film, and my tolerance for things which are stylish but grim is quite low. The last part of the film simply seems to be weird. I can't be bothered. I sent it back.

Everyone else has disappeared by now, but I venture back out into the garden. It’s dark, cool, and peaceful, apart from the inescapable gurring of traffic and distant whooping from someone or other. The church below stands out as a dark and elegant shape, painted in chocolate light and shadow by a streetlamp. There are lights strung out all along the bay as it curves off to St. Helier and melts away into the distant Elizabeth Castle. St. Aubin’s own little islet fort juts out into the sea to the right, giving them the look of two lovers calling to one another across the bay.

A faint rain begins to fall, speckling my skin softly like the kisses of ghosts. The day is over.

Buying ebooks in Japan, part 2

So, the Rakuten thing was, in the end, a... partial success at most.

I still have very little idea of what was going on technically bar my own guesses, but then I didn't actually ask for the specifics of their technology.

As a reminder, I began with an English Kobo account linked to a Yahoo email address. I then ended up with a Japanese Rakuten-Kobo account linked to a Gmail account. My Kobo device could only be registered with one of these accounts at a time, so it wasn't possible to view both sets of books on the same device.

The customer service people explained that they thought they could find a way to unify my 'libraries' (the books I've bought from Kobo and Rakuten-Kobo respectively) into a single account. I could then read books from both Kobo and Rakuten-Kobo on the same However, that account would be assigned to one country. For complicated and annoying legal reasons, most booksellers can only sell their books (including electronic ones) within a single country. For this reason, I'd only be able to access the account while I was in that country, and any books from the wrong country would be unavailable anywhere else. This was, as you might imagine, Not Okay.

I eventually worked out that although I can't load Japanese books onto my English Kobo device, I can set the Kobo desktop software to link to my Japanese account. This allows me to read the books on my computer. It's a very poor solution on a broad scale, but it does solve the immediate problem. I have closed my correspondence with Kobo.

However, I'm basically going to have to advise anyone visiting Japan that:

1. You should not bother trying to buy ebooks from Rakuten-obo, even if you have a Kobo account.
2. You should not bother buying books from any other Japanese publisher unless you are willing for your books to be unavailable as soon as you leave the country. As far as I can establish (not, admittedly, very far), all the notable Japanese e-book retailers use heavy DRM and restrict access to your account based on your computer's current location.
3. I was unable to find any Japanese retailers who do not use DRM. Not only DRM, but app-based DRM. You will need the retailer's own proprietary software to read any ebooks. There don't currently seem to be any Japanese equivalents of Smashwords, Baen or other publishers who sell ebooks that you can just use, unless they're so small that their output is probably not useful to the casual reader.
4. Essentially, it seems that currently buying Japanese ebooks is a complete waste of time and money. They have no interest in making this convenient for you and don't trust you as far as they can throw you, even though you are the one giving them money. This attitude is sadly prevalent in all countries, but I haven't found any exceptions in Japan.
5. You will almost certainly not be able to access your account from outside the coutnry, which means not only inability to buy new books, but also to download books you already paid for. If you do ignore my advice and buy some, make very sure to download them while you're in-country.

All that being said, it is technically possible to buy books while you're in Japan. People of a certain bolshie inclination will be aware that methods exist to remove DRM and other protections from ebooks, allowing you (rather than the publisher) to control what happens with them - such as where you can read them, using what devices. It's even technically possible to use a proxy server to pretend to be in Japan, in order to buy books. However, these methods are not necessarily strictly legal in a lot of places, and (perhaps more importantly to many readers?) involve an awful lot of hassle. So these aren't exactly a good alternative solution.

At present, the advantages of e-books are not sufficiently exploited to make them worthwhile. Paper books may take up space and cost money to transport (the great advantages of e-books), but a paper book doesn't care where you want to read it. You can buy a paper book from another country and have it sent to you, but cannot buy a digital copy of the same book from that other country (despite the obvious environmental advantages) even though both seem to be functionally identical in that you're buying a book outside the country where the company is licensed to sell it. Why? I dunno.

Sadly, British retailers sell a terrifyingly small amount of non-English literature, mostly the sort of things that appear on exam syllabi and win awards for being thoroughly miserable (thus marking them out as Proper Literature). Linguists, polyglots and expats are still left with the problem that books really need to be imported, as paper items, at a premium, via specialist bookshops or expensive international shipping. Have fun.

Buying ebooks in Japan, part 1

So, some time ago I started moving away from physical books on account of having filled all the physical space with books. I began buying e-books instead. These are surprisingly good, considering my first suspicious, and I've found it a great help. Now, one of the reasons I have so many books is that I own a lot of books that are quite specialised, and so hard to get in libraries and so on (so hard, in fact, that I sort of stopped using libraries). Of the, um... 1000+ books that I do or recently did own, 200 are in non-English languages, while a large number are genre fiction or just old stuff that doesn't tend to end up in libraries (a lot of this is second-hand, or left over from my childhood, or both).

Well, after a very hesitant and reluctant start, ebooks are starting to become a thing in Japan. I suspect one reason it's slow is that a lot of books are very cheap here already - there are massive bookshops selling second-hand stuff for 75p, and so on - so they feel fairly disposable? Regardless, I thought this was a good time to try taking the plunge, because if I can conveniently get Japanese books as data, that would be really handy in the future.

First off, Rakuten. This is a big player in Japan, a kind of Amazon affair. It also now owns Kobo, the brand of ebook reader I own. In the process of buying it, they managed to make it impossible to log into the UK Kobo website from Japan, leaving me entirely unable to do anything with my account, because I'm forcibly redirected to the Rakuten site which doesn't give access to my Kobo account. Joy! But let's try buying something from them.

I track down a cheap ebook.

Despite Rakuten's ebooks being sold through Kobo, apparently they haven't actually made the systems compatible, so I can't log in with my Kobo account to buy it. I need to create a new account.

I need to register with Japanese address and phone number. This is a bit extreme, I feel. Far too much detail, not necessary, especially when you're only buying ebooks!

After some time, I have successfully registered with Rakuten, but I can't buy anything. Because, even though they let me create an account, they refuse to let me buy any of their Rakuten-Kobo ebooks because I used the same email address to register with Rakuten that I already had with Kobo and these two are apparently in conflict. This is rampant imbecility of a kind rarely parallelled.

I fire off an infuriated email, sigh and go to do the washing up.

A pleasant customer service person writes back:

According to our record, you could not buy an e-book from us because the account you created here was same as the one from your country.

In order to create Rakuten Kobo account you will need to register with other account but my email address. LINK.

I do this, and to my surprise, it works! I buy one book, for about £2, as a test, which is all I'm doing really. Then I open the Kobo desktop application, attach my Kobo to the computer, and wait for it to update. It does. The book still isn't there.

Kind customer service person (henceforth KCSP) writes back to confirm that I own the book, and explains sychronisation (the updating thing) in case I'm doing it wrong. I'm not.

I write back and ask whether the problem is not, in fact, that my Kobo is registered to my original Yahoo email address, used to set up my original Kobo account, whilst the book was bought on my Rakuten-Kobo account linked to my Gmail address. I am feeling increasingly sorry for KCSP by now, but I like to think that my teachers would be proud of me on account of how I'm doing all of this in Japanese.

KCSP replies with various points. Firstly, apparently I should really be talking to Kobo UK since that's where I bought my Kobo. However, they will keep helping me for now. I am grateful for this, because Kobo UK essentially shrugged like a French waiter when I first had problems arriving here, and that definitely didn't reply to my emails within an hour.

Secondly, they are a bit confused by my accounts. I, also.

Thirdly, they want various details.

After a good night's sleep to digest this on a clear head (seriously, you try reading customer service emails about a highly technical matter* in another language after studying for 8 hours) I reply. It's not exactly a direct reply, but I basically write out the entire history of my interactions with Kobo, laying out purchases, accounts, email addresses and what went wrong at each stage, so they can be clear. All I want is to be able to buy books in both Japanese and English, and read them on my device what I purchased from the company what sells these books. The only reason I'm using Rakuten is because I can't get to the Kobo website - although admittedly I'm not sure that sells books in Japanese. Maybe? I don't know, because I'm not allowed to look at it.

Watch this space...

* I'm really not clear on exactly what's going on, but basically they have apparently made a horrible bodge of setting up systems when Rakuten bought Kobo. The Rakuten system is aware of my Kobo account just enough to stop me registering a Rakuten account with the same email address as my Kobo account, but not enough to let me either a) log in with my Kobo account, or b) unify the contents of these accounts in any way. This is a Very Specific Level of unification.

Typhoon Travelling

One of the problems with Japan is typhoons. It's unfortunate, then, that the halfway point in my stay, the expiration date of my visa waiver, and my half-term holiday coincide with peak typhoon season, because all three of those are reasons why I want or need to be travelling.

Although nothing was said about it at the time, I suspect the problems with my flight to Okinawa were not unrelated to typhoons, either directly or indirectly. Certainly some other attendees were delayed by the typhoon.

Today I'm due to fly to Korea in order to re-enter Japan and get a new 90-day permission to stay. It's a bit of a farce to be honest, wasting a lot of time, money and effort both for the visitor and for the Japanese authorities. I'm not sure why, if you're allowed to renew once and once only, they don't just track that separately and not bother making you nominally leave the country for a few hours at great expense. However, I assume this is something lots of countries do and there's some kind of reasoning behind it.

Shortly after the agency had booked my tickets, my friend Sean in Korea piped up that maybe we could meet up. We worked out it was just about possible - unfortunately my flight was arranged to Busan, the closest city to Japan, rather than anywhere near Sean. But assuming a seamless journey between the plane flight, shuttle bus, high-speed train and local bus in both directions, it would be possible to meet up for a few hours after work and catch up on things, as well as get a very brief introduction to Korea. From one point of view, this would involve spending 19 hours travelling to spend 3 hours with Sean, but the majority of that is the obligatory section of getting from my apartment into Fukuoka, then out to the airport, over to the international terminal, to Korea, and from Busan Airport into the city.

Anyway, on arrival on the airport I was immediately told that my flight would be either delayed or cancelled due to a typhoon, so either way the meeting is off this time. While I by no means want to get the trip cancelled (both because I need a visa, and because I'm already at the wretched airport and have already had one wasted trip here), on the plus side, if it does get cancelled I may be able to arrange a better scheme to see Sean.

A plea for sanity

Dear Japan:

I wanted very much to enjoy our time together. You seemed pretty cool and interesting. I was really hoping this would work out.

But you have to do something about these cockroaches.

When I get woken up at 00:40 to a baleful scrabbling sound, and that resist that growing dread in the pit of my stomach for as long as possible before finally getting up and turning on the light and seeing the inevitable boding shape lurking in my kitchen, and spend ten increasingly-stressful minutes chasing the nine-times-damned manifestation of all that is vile around my kitchen wearing only pyjamas, painfully aware of the bareness of my feet and the creature's delight in climbing up things - when I am left clinging onto surfaces as I reach anxiously into cupboards with only a thin plazzy bag on my fingers to try and catch the bugger - when I finally chase it outside and am left coated in a fresh layer of sweat, anxiously miserablely aware that another might manifest at absolutely any moment, and entirely unable to sleep - then I feel justified in saying, Japan, seriously, cockroaches.

Half-term update

I just finished my first term at GenkiJACS and wanted to reflect on how I feel about things so far.

The school

The school is good, definitely. I've made clear progress in my Japanese, not just in terms of vocabulary or memorising facts, but more broadly. I'm more confident about using Japanese, to the point where I will cheerfully (if confusedly) talk to shop assistants in Japanese, rather than giving up and using English or avoiding conversation. I'm getting a better sense of things like having a conversation - how to throw in a word or two to show approval or interest, how to pull the meat out of a sentence without understanding the whole thing, and coping with a variety of different accents. It's impossible, of course, to separate out what I learned at school from the more general experience of living in Japan.

The staff are universally friendly, helpful and interesting. We have some great discussions in class, as well as covering the actual lesson material. Naturally, some people's style works better for me than others, but I feel like I get on well with all of them. There's good feedback on assignments, and while I try not to delve too far into full-blown linguistics, teachers always try to answer the technical queries that I do raise. The teachers and admin staff alike are always happy to give suggestions or advice for general "living in Japan" issues. I've found dealing with any bureaucratic stuff straightforward, as the staff will always work through things with you, even when it's not really school-related. They have helped out with things like booking my trip to Korea so I can renew my visa, which makes that much less stressful.

Class is fine, though naturally interest varies with the particular material, exercises, classmates and how much sleep I've had. As a long-term student I've gone through a mix of classmates, so I've always got new things to pick up and more to learn about all these interesting people. Some have been great company for lunches or shopping trips, some are full of interesting information; none have yet been annoying. By a process of elimination, I may well be the annoying one.

The facilities are fine, although they're clearly stretched to their limit now during the peak season. We have unlimited hot drinks, and for my undescriminating palate they're good enough - some of the coffee purists I've worked with would be dismayed by our family-size tub of instant. I can usually find somewhere to eat lunch, even if it's occasionally squatting on the floor of the lounge. There's a popular games console, where I've occasionally whiled away a bit of time with classmates but am hopeless at the fighting games on offer. Having to switch shoes to head to the loo is a mild irritation but part of Japanese culture.

I think the only niggles I really have are size and storage. Obviously the school wants to take on as many students as it reasonably can, but it does sometimes end up near-impossible to sit down in the lounge, or to fight through the crowded reception bottleneck between the entrace, classrooms and lounge. I've made very little use of the lounge for private study, because I've just found it awkward to get space during the summer.

Storagewise, I'm sure it's a logistical issue, but lockers are about the only thing I genuinely find missing from the school. It's very hot here, and toting around a hefty textbook, notebooks, reading material for lunchtime and my lunch gets old fast. If I want to do any study in the lounge or a café, I also want to bring my laptop, which is pretty heavy. And I need to shop for food just about daily, and some of that stuff is very heavy (milk, juice, fruit and veg). The end result is that I can easily end up with a ridiculously heavy rucksack by the time I'm heading home, sweating buckets. It also makes it unappealing to do things like go for a walk before or after school. Lockers would be a massive help. I could stow my textbooks at the school instead of carrying them back and forth, especially as most of us try to finish homework in the lounge, and actually if I did this I wouldn't need the rucksack at all. I could bring my laptop in without concern that I'd have to lug it around all day if I went for a walk with someone, as I could leave my stuff in the lockers and collect it before school closed.

Fukuoka

Fukuoka is about as interesting as I expected it to be. It's got some stuff to look at, but like most cities it has limited entertainment value unless you have friends to hang out with. It's a pretty comfortable place, and barring my constant cyclist paranoia I've never felt any concern as I wander around at random, even in the dark. There's a lot of things I'm clearly not taking advantage of, like its array of restaurants, because going into restaurants on my own is just not a thing I do.

It is a very 70s-looking city, consisting mostly of large concrete buildings. There are a few small parks, but minimal greenery of any kind, and every route anywhere is clogged with roads. Most of the pavemants are very narrow and shared with daredevil cyclists. This, plus the heat, means I haven't found it particularly interesting to walk round at random, although I walk anyway out of habit and need for exercise. You can't stroll down the river, because all the rivers have been turned into large concrete drains with zero ecological value. Birds are few and far between. It's a perfectly liveable place, but not one full of romance and leisurely places to stroll.

Shopping for basics is pretty easy, once you work out what you can get and how to identify shops. It's definitely pricey, but not ruinous for someone coming from the UK. That being said, I only really buy groceries and the odd book, so I've no idea of the general shopping scene.

As regular readers may have gathered, the weather is not a friend to me.

Apartment

The apartment is cheap, liveable, but deeply inconvenient in many ways. There's nothing like adequate storage, so it's always a bit of a mess, and I'm obliged to keep bin bags inside awaiting the twice-weekly collection, which is just a bit minging. The kitchen is completely inadequate spacewise, so things like dishes and cooking are a massive pain. Sometimes literally! The crowdedness of the 1'-square area immediately next to the hob leads to regular mid-cooking complications and I've ended up with several burns as I struggle to prevent disaster (say, plastic items tumbling into the flame).

I've also had to deal with more cockroaches than I appreciate in my living quarters. Slugs were bad enough.

The air-conditioning is old, and has no instruction manual, so I can only use very basic features even though it appears to be a bit clever. On the plus side, it does have air-conditioning.

Sticking with positives, it's a quiet set of flats with no problem neighbours and very conveniently located. The underground, corner shops and an inordinate number of dental clinics are all within a stone's throw.

Current feelings

I'm just about to head off on half-term for three weeks, during which I need to attend a really cool conference in Okinawa (excitement!), go to Korea so I can get a re-entry visa to last me until Christmas, and prepare for my exam. I'm definitely a bit tired out and will appreciate the break, although I suspect I'm also going to get pretty lonely.

And my poll question: Would I do this again, knowing what I do now?

Hmm. Umm. Sorry, but not.

I should say that this doesn't reflect at all on the school, but is entirely a climate issue. I knew in advance that it would be hot and muggy, and this isn't my kind of weather, but I hadn't appreciated just how much of an impact that would have over three months. I spend an awful lot of time tired and cross as a result, and just about everything is less fun in the heat. I'm used to walking everywhere and walking a lot, but here it's a very unappealing prospect, and I've ended up exploring the city far less than I normally would - no three-hour walking tours for me. Running, my go-to sport, is only feasible for me late at night in pitch darkness when the temperature drops to 25C or so. I find it near-impossible to sleep without air-conditioning, which is expensive and environmentally-disastrous.

The annoyance of going out also means I end up spending a lot more time indoors than normal. Whereas of an afternoon I'd generally look to head to the park with a book or laptop, I'm reluctant to do that unless I expect to spend a fair bit of time there, because of the effort involved. On sunny days it's often too hot to sit out in most places, while Fukuoka is also prone to sudden rainstorms that would ruin a day out (and indeed a laptop), so I don't want to do it on cloudy days.

While I might consider coming to Japan again, I just don't think I'm a person built to cope with temperatures much above the 20C mark on any kind of regular basis. A return visit to Fukuoka doesn't seem like a great option for me.